“Android is the operating system that powers over 1 billion smartphones and tablets. Since these devices make our lives so sweet, each Android version is named after a dessert: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Jelly Bean.

"As everybody finds it difficult to stay away from chocolate we decided to name the next version of Android after one of our favorite chocolate treats, KitKat.”

What's new with Android 9 Pie? All the latest Android Pie features

Battery Saver: Battery Saver keeps your charge going longer than ever by turning off features like the Always-On display. Plus, you have more control over when it comes on - so you can go further on one charge.

Adaptive Battery: This feature uses machine learning to predict which apps you'll use in the next few hours and which you likely won't, so your phone only spends battery power on the apps you care about.

Adaptive Brightness: With Adaptive Brightness, your phone learns how you set your screen's brightness in different lighting environments and automatically does it for you over time.

Background restrictions: Now, you'll see recommendations in Settings to restrict certain apps that use too much battery, so you can have more control over your battery.

Digital Wellbeing

Do Not Disturb: Improvements to Do Not Disturb to silence not just notification sounds, but also all the visual interruptions. Calls from starred contacts will still come through, so you don't have to worry about missing something urgent.

App dashboard: Get a daily view of the time spent on your phone, how frequently you use different apps, and how many notifications you get.

Wind Down: Set a daily schedule to get your phone ready for bed. Grayscale fades your screen to gray while Do Not Disturb silences notifications for a restful sleep.

App timers: App timers let you set daily time limits for your apps. When you reach the limit, the app is paused for the rest of the day.

Slices shows relevant information from your fave apps when you need it

Display

Notch love: Support for devices with cutouts to make use of available screen space.

Edge-to-edge screens: Support for devices with 18:9 and taller aspect ratios, and devices with display cutouts.

Media

Multiple Bluetooth connections: With Android 9, you can connect up to five Bluetooth devices and switch between these devices seamlessly. Incoming phone calls will be sent to all connected Bluetooth devices that can accept, so you'll never miss a call.

Sound delay reporting: Android 9 offers support for headsets with sound delay reporting, so video on your device and audio on your headphones can always stay in sync.

Volume memory per Bluetooth device: Android 9 will now remember the last volume you set for each of your Bluetooth devices. No more blasting music too loudly when you reconnect to your car or headphones.

With Slices, if you start typing “Lyft” into Google Search, you’ll see a “slice” of the Lyft app, showing prices for your ride home and the ETA for a driver

HDR: Android 9 adds built-in support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) VP9 Profile 2, so you can watch HDR-enabled movies on YouTube and Google Play Movies. HDR improves the brightness and color range of video to improve the picture quality and experience.

Android biometric prompt: Android 9 introduces a number of new security features, including a standardised biometric authentication prompt to provide a more consistent authentication experience across Android.

Adaptive Battery learns the apps you use most and prioritises battery for them,

Android Protected Confirmation: On compatible hardware, apps can now use UI controlled by the secure hardware to get your confirmation for a sensitive transaction, such as making a payment.

StrongBox: On compatible hardware, apps can now take advantage of tamper-resistant hardware to protect their private keys, making it harder than ever for malware to steal their credentials.

Privacy enhancements: Android 9 safeguards privacy in a number of new ways. Now, Android will restrict access to your phone's microphone, camera, or other sensors when an app is idle or running in the background. (If an app does need to access a sensor, it will show a persistent notification on your phone.) Android 9 also brings important improvements that protect all web communications and offer private web surfing.

Android Oreo, released last August, is only on 12.1 percent of active Android devices

New system navigation: Re-design of Android's system navigation to help make it simpler to search and move between apps. Swipe up from anywhere to see full-screen previews of recently used apps, swipe left and right to easily navigate between them, and tap on one to jump in.

App Actions: App Actions predicts what you’ll want to do next based on your context and displays that action right on your phone, saving you time.

Slices: Interactive snippets of your favourite apps can be surfaced in different places, like Google Search.

Overview Selection: Long-press to select text or image in Overview mode and see actions based on what you've selected (for example, an option to route to an address with Google Maps or share for an image).

When can you get Android 9 Pie?

Google's Android 9 Pie started rolling out as an over-the-air update to Pixel phones (including the original Pixel range and the Pixel 2 series) on Monday.

If you already downloaded the update's near-final beta version, you may not notice many differences.

Digital Wellbeing is still a separate opt-in beta (which Pixel owners with Android Pie downloaded can sign up for here), and Slices, which shows relevant info from your apps in search results and Google Assistant, won't arrive until autumn.

As usual, the update situation is a bit murkier for other Android phone owners.